Friday, January 13, 2017

Mutiny at the Vatican as Pope Francis faces dissent

IN A move that is unprecedented in the modern history of the Papacy,
four cardinals have publicly challenged Pope Francis.

In the words of
his biographer, Paul Vallely, the four “have published ‘doubts’,
virtually accusing him of heresy”.The four are Cardinal Raymond Burke (USA), Cardinal Carlo Caffarra
(former Archbishop of Bologna), Cardinal Joacim Meisner (former
Archbishop of Cologne), and Cardinal Walter Brandmuller (Germany),
former president of the Pontifical Commission for Historical Sciences.

Cardinal Burke has been a persistent critic of Pope Francis, and two
years ago was removed from his position as head of the Supreme Tribunal
of the Apostolic Signatura (the Church’s Supreme Court) for refusing to
implement changes to procedures for annulments which has been sanctioned
by the Pope. A former Archbishop of Archdiocese of St Louis, he now
serves as patron of the Order of Malta.

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The very public expression of opposition by these four senior
churchmen to the Pope has no parallel in the history of the modern
Papacy, and means, in the words of Clifford Longley, editorial adviser
to the English Catholic weekly The Tablet, that “Pope Francis has a
mutiny of his hands”.

This situation, of its very nature, bodes ill for the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was 80 in December.

All of this arises from the publication in April of Pope Francis’s
document Amoris Laetita (“the Joy of Love”) which followed two Synods in
Rome on the theme of “the family”.

As is customary, since the very first Synod of Bishops in 1967, the
synodal discussions are followed by a papal document, which reflects to a
greater or lesser extent what was said in the synod chamber.

Deciding to include or exclude what the synods may have recommended
is entirely a matter for the Pope.

During the long 25-year pontificate
of John Paul II — when most of the Synods took place — the imperious
Polish pontiff very often paid little or no heed to what was said in
synod. His views prevailed.

Inevitably, of course, this greatly diminished the status of the
institution, and the synods increasingly came to be regarded as mere
talking shops. This trend continued during the eight-year pontificate of
Benedict XVI, but Pope Francis wanted to change this.At the opening of the first Synod on the Family in 2014 (the second
Synod was held in 2015), he told the assembled bishops he wanted them to
speak their minds, and not be trying to tell him what they thought he
wanted to hear.

It was a refreshing departure from the expectations of his two
predecessors. As part of the preparations for the session in Rome, the
Vatican sent a questionnaire (unnecessarily complex, it must be said) to
diocesan bishops as part of a process of engagement with the laity.

It’s not at all clear how widely this document was circulated in
dioceses here and elsewhere.

Predictably, the Irish Bishops — always in
thrall to the bureaucrats in Rome — kept what feedback emerged here
under wraps.

The German Bishops, however, released the feedback there. On matters
such as sexuality, marriage and the family, some of the findings tended
to confirm the view expressed by Cardinal Carlo Martini, the Archbishop
of Milan (a Jesuit, like Pope Francis), shortly before his death in
2012: “The Church is 200 years out of date.”

The Cardinal’s interview was published in Corriere della Sera, one of
Italy’s leading newspapers, hours after his death from Parkinson’s
disease, and understandably caused a degree of consternation in the
Vatican.

Long before that, Martini had supported the use of condoms in the
battle against HIV, and had also questioned the Church’s line on gay
relationships and divorce — calling on it to reconsider what constituted
a family in the 21st century or risk losing more of its flock.

It would be unreal, of course, to expect a Synod dominated by
conservative bishops (most of them appointed by the ultra-conservative
John Paul II) to reflect any of this in their contributions. Most of
them were committed to maintaining the status quo, and concerned that
reforms would have a destabilising effect on the Church.

But in the four years between Martini’s death and the opening of the
first Synod on the Family, some of the cardinals’ thinking had had some
influence beyond the Archdiocese of Milan.

And in a clear signal that he saw need for reform in the Church’s
approach to divorced and remarried Catholics, Pope Francis arranged for
Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany (who was known to be sympathetic to
Cardinal Martini’s liberal agenda) to prepare a document for the synod
fathers.Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, published a book entitled Mercy: The Essence of the
Gospel and the Key to Christian Life in 2014, and expressed support for
Ireland’s referendum on same-sex marriage in May 2015, saying it was
“emblematic for the situation we now find ourselves in, not only in
Europe but in the whole West”.

One of the key questions the synod faced was — should divorced and
remarried Catholics be admitted to the sacraments? The synod didn’t
provide a single answer to this; opinion was divided, but there was a
measure of support for a position that recognised mitigating factors and
situations. At the end of the deliberations, it would — as is the
practice — be left to the Pope himself to provide an overview.

Pope Francis, who was elected in 2013, had made mercy one of the
central themes of his papacy, and how he would give practical expression
to this would almost certainly set him at odds with some powerful
cardinals, both inside and beyond the Roman Curia.

He knew this in advance, since there has been resistance to him from the beginning of his pontificate.

When it finally appeared last March, running to 189 pages, it
disappointed both liberals and conservatives. While liberals praised the
proclamation in that it called for the Church to be more welcoming to
and less judgmental of single parents, gay people and unmarried straight
couples living together — and also signalled a pastoral path for
divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion — they also
hoped it would go further.

The Pope once again closed the door on same-sex marriage, saying it
cannot be seen as the equivalent of heterosexual unions. And he did not,
as some had hoped, detail health exceptions to the ban on
contraception.

Conservatives, however, were less impressed. The editor of First
Things, a conservative journal, called the exhortation a “muddy
document”.Much more was to follow. Some weeks after the publication of
Francis’s document, a letter was sent by 45 theologians and clergymen to
the 218 cardinals and patriarchs of the Catholic Church, asking them to
request clarification from the Pope about certain sections of the
document, which, they said, had “putative heretical implications”.

In November, the four cardinals submitted a series of questions to
the Pope, questions which demanded yes or no answers. Such a challenge,
as Christopher Lamb, the Vatican correspondent of The Tablet emphasised,
would have been unheard of during John Paul II or Benedict XVI’s
papacies.

The Pope said critics of his document fail to see how the Holy Spirit
has been working since Vatican II, arguing that they see “either white
or black, even if it is in the flow of life that one must discern”.

In his exhortation, the Pope had said he was “in agreement with the
many synod fathers who observed that the baptised who are divorced and
civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into Christian
communities”.

And he went on to stress the need to “avoid a cold bureaucratic
morality in dealing with more sensitive issues”. What was required
instead was “a pastoral discernment filled with merciful love, which is
ever ready to understand, forgive, accompany, hope, and above all
integrate”.

The controversy over Amoris Laetitia rumbles on, and is a clear sign
of the tug-of-war going on behind the scenes over the Church’s future.
Will it be a Church based on mercy, forgiveness, personal discernment
and dialogue or a rules-based Church?

The Pope used his annual Christmas meeting with the members of the Roman Curia to warn against opposition to his position.

He referred to cases of “malicious resistance” which “spring up in
misguided minds and come to the fore when the devil inspires ill
intentions, often cloaked in sheep’s clothing”.

His problem now, though, is that the genie of opposition at the highest level is now out of the bottle.

Where will it end?

This Pope is aware that the plotting and planning for his successor have already begun in Rome.